Looks Like a Solo Tonight
by WindTreesandStars
Summary: They listen to the song, each separately recalling last year when they were the ones to sing the duet.  But there is no duet for them this time around; there's just a solo tonight.


_AN: Rachel and Finn reflect separately as they listen to Kurt & Blaine's duet at Regionals, remembering that last year they were the ones singing and thinking about the reasons why it will be not a duet but a solo tonight._

_I own nothing—not Glee, not the characters, not the song "Candles" by Hey Monday._

G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E

_**The power lines went out, and I am all alone.  
But I don't really care at all, not answering my phone.**_

_RACHEL:_

I haven't really talked with him since my encounter with Quinn in the auditorium. I've talked _to_ him—he's said words to me and I've replied with appropriate responses—but we haven't talked _with_ each other, exchanging thoughts, ideas, and opinions.

He asked me why I stopped working with her on the song. I responded quickly, before he could ask any more, or tell me that I hurt her feelings, or question my motives. I said she'd helped me finally figure out what to write about, but that the only way to go deep into the personal places where my singing and songs come from was to do it on my own. He told me he'd be happy to give it a listen. I told him, "Thank you, but no," that Mr. Schuester had reviewed it for me, that I thought I'd finally managed to get it right.

I sang part of my song for the group, explaining that I'd chosen to write about my mistake at the start of the year that cost us Sunshine and sent her straight into the arms of our strongest competition. I told them that I hoped using this song at Regionals would help, in some part, to make up for my mistake. I didn't need to sing it through all the way; after the first verse and chorus, they voted for this to be our competition ballad. I worked on it afterward with Tina and Brittany, and with the other girls who would sing back-up; our full group time in glee was used to practice and perfect our anthem. He's never heard me sing my song all the way through.

I'm pretty sure that Mr. Schuester realizes the song is multilayered, that it speaks of more than I would admit to before the group, but he may be the only one. I didn't lie to my teammates; my mistake of September is certainly there in what I wrote. But there is more—so much more. As I saw the lyrics take shape and form while flowing out of my pen, as the sheet of paper was bathed in my tears, as I began to hear the music swelling in my mind, I started to realize just how much "hard pain" was available to me to access and express.

There was the pain of repeatedly trying to execute a plan for glee's success (recruiting new members, selling 'sexy' in song, confessing our 'vitamin-D' usage, selling mattresses) only to have my efforts make everything worse. The pain of pushing so hard to make the group excellent and being resented, distained, and insulted in response. The pain of falling for Jesse, of thinking I'd done the worst thing possible by wounding him with my musical video and then of realizing I'd been played, used, and betrayed by him. The pain of opening myself to the dream of finding my mother, inviting her into my life and asking to be a part of hers, only to be rejected, to be told it was too late, to have to face the truth that I wasn't wanted. The pain of reaching out time and again to befriend those in New Directions—Quinn, Puck, Kurt, the group as a whole—and of believing I finally had friends, had made connections, only to be told that it was all in my imagination, that we were never friends to begin with. The pain of learning how they kept secrets from me, seeing them turn away from me, hearing them tell me they only pretended to like me. All of these pains are woven into each note of my song.

And echoing and encapsulating them all, a theme running through both melody and harmony, counterpoint to all the rest, metaphor for everything I had hoped and longed for, is him—is having let myself believe it was real, having messed it up, having tried to make it right, only to be forced to hear it is over, that it is gone, and having to face the truth that I am all alone. Music, at its core, is supposed to tell the truth, but Kurt's song right now is lying: because I do really care, about it all, about them all, about him, about everything. And I sit here, all alone.

_**All the games you played, the promises you made,**_

_FINN:_

Honestly, there are times when I can't even remember why we aren't together anymore, what happened to break us up, when it all started to go wrong. I mean, yeah, when I stop and think about it I can remember why—I can put myself back in that empty hall, can hear her telling me, can feel the punch to my gut as I realized what she was saying. But how we got there—how we got _here_—and when it began to all fall apart? I'm not sure I've ever figured that part out.

I remember a feeling of absolute certainty—of being absolutely certain that she was to blame, only to blame, all to blame. I pulled away from her when she first told me, lashing out at her, saying you couldn't go to couples counseling if you weren't a couple. I turned my back and walked away when she accused me of breaking my promise to never break up with her, saying (_did I say it right out, or was it just implied?_) that she'd broken _her_ promise (_did _she_ ever say it right out, or was it just implied?_) to never make me feel this way, to be the person I could trust not to hurt me, not to cheat on me, to be the person who was different from Quinn.

It had felt like being sucked into a time-machine thrusting me back to _then_, to a year ago (_almost exactly a year to the day, how was that for freaking irony_), to the utter humiliation and rage of learning that my first girlfriend had cheated on me, had lied to me, had used me, had made a fool of me. Fast-forward a year ahead, and it felt like I was stuck in repeat, Bill Murray trapped in Groundhog Day, reliving it all again, the feelings crashing in on me again, the words _I'm done with you!_ echoing, echoing, echoing again so that I couldn't hear anything else.

All there had been for me to do was to walk away, run away, end it all. I had been certain that was my only option. But, maybe, I hadn't really been _certain_, you know? Because I didn't totally end it all right away. I didn't say I was done with _her_. My heart broke there in the hallway, but I broke _us _apart, officially, in a Christmas tree lot.

I wonder if, after once loving the scent, I'll now hate the smell of fresh pine forever. I went straight from the lot to a big box store and bought an artificial tree to take home, telling my mom and Burt that it just seemed to be more practical, that now we didn't need to worry about dripping sap or falling needles messing up the floor of the new house. I knew I wouldn't be able to make it through the holidays with that smell in the house, because now it just made me think of her. It seemed like an appropriate metaphor—an artificial tree for a season in which I felt like everything was artificial, fake, not what it seemed.

I broke us apart after she kept coming at me, coming after me, trying to force me to forgive her, not giving me any time to think it over. Not giving me any space to try to read between the lines of why her anger was about _Santana_ and not about the fact that I'd had sex, period. Not giving me any way to read between the lines of how she said she felt about me and the reality of what she did to deliberately hurt me by turning to him.

She'd seen me back then, and she'd known how it would hurt—that's precisely why she did it, to _make_ me hurt: she_ told_ me that was why. It felt like being caught up in someone's game all over again—like an instant replay of the game Quinn and Puck had played with me—and once again, I was the loser, a Lima loser, the one who lost before he even realized the game was being played.

But if that had been the end of the game, when had it started? And was it really possible to have been the loser of the game without also being one of the players? Had I set the game in motion by not telling her the truth when she confessed to me about Jesse? Or when I slept with Santana in order to make her jealous? When I rejected her to 'find my inner rock-star' because I was still reeling over what Quinn had done, still trying to deal with my messed up feelings for Quinn?

And it sure doesn't feel like there _has_ been an end to the game-playing. Because even if I hadn't been a part of those games, lately I've been doing nothing _but _play games—games to boost my reputation even higher; games to beat out Sam by taking Quinn from him and lying to him; games to keep her from knowing Quinn and I are back together. She told me once that all she asked was that I be honest with her, saying she'd always be honest with me in return. For the most part, she's kept her promise—she only lied to me twice, once saying she'd broken things off with Jesse and once saying she'd slept with him. She's like Kurt that way, and like Puck (_keeping Quinn's secret from me is the only time Puck's lied to me in all the years we've known each other, and that was for Quinn's sake. Like he told Mr. Schue, he may be a lot of things, but he isn't a liar; I'm sure he wanted to tell me, and the whole world, the second he learned that Quinn was pregnant_). They—my step-brother, my not-quite-ex-best-friend, and her—all have too much pride in being who they are to feel the need or desire to pretend to think or say or be something they are not.

Lying is my game, and Quinn's. We're the ones who keep hiding things, who keep letting people think things about us that aren't so in order to protect ourselves and our reputations. And now I'm caught between my current "keep Quinn & me a secret" game and my promise to go public with the relationship after tonight; there's no way to end this game without _her_ getting hurt, and I wish I could come up with a way to make the promise to Quinn disappear and keep the game going. Because I'm not with her, but I don't want to hurt her; I don't want to cause her pain.

_**couldn't finish what you started; only darkness still remains.**_

_RACHEL:_

I thought we would last forever.

I know it is cliché, a tale ripped out of fairytales and fantasy (_just like Quinn said_); but I've always believed in fairytales, and fantasy is just another way of telling a timeless truth: the mismatched pair find each other, discover they fit, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Beyond cliché, I know the odds of it working out were against us; how many high school romances go the distance? (_And if they did, wouldn't they just end up like Mr. Schuester and his wife, making each other miserable because they tried to freeze the other person into who they were when they met at age fifteen?_) How could two people as different as the two of us are hold on to each other all the way? How would it be possible that he'd continue to want me?

I knew that I would never break up with him. Against all my instincts and inclinations for self-preservation, I had finally let myself believe that he would never break up with me. It was a belief that was hard to come by even after I heard him say the words. I was slow to trust, resisting letting my guard down. My insecurities—not just about him, but about everything in my life that had taught me not to count on good relationships lasting—kept driving me to put things to the test, to see if our connection would hold strong under pressure and stress. After what I went through with Jesse—believing in the face of repeated causes for concern that he truly, deeply cared about me, only to find it had all been a scheme that ended in humiliation of the worst kind—it was hard to let myself believe another relationship could be real.

Despite all my reasons to doubt, though, I did come to have utter and absolute faith in us. It became a constant, a solid, a bedrock truth of my life. Because I knew him (_I thought I knew him_) and I knew he could be trusted (_I thought he could be trusted_) to do the right thing, to be honest with me, to keep my heart safe. So I threw myself into the moment and allowed the happiness we shared (_I thought we shared_) to permeate my days. I let myself relax, ceased to brace myself for the inevitable moment when it would all collapse around me, when it would sink down like a ship going under, a relationship gone aground and sinking down.

What had started out rocky and been uncertain for a year had finally taken form, mass, weight; it had become my lodestar, illuminating the future before me, offering the promise of a life filled not just with laurels of achievement but with the promise that I would not be alone, that I'd have love-I'd have it all. I'd let myself believe we were on our way to that future, and I really thought we'd make it, we'd go the distance, we'd have it all.

But now it is gone. He is gone. The dream of the full-on happily-ever-after is gone. Only darkness remains.

_**Lost sight; couldn't see when it was you and me.  
Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight.  
I'm beginning to see the light. **_

_FINN:_

Last year, we were the ones singing the duet. When it seemed like everything was crashing down around the club, when it seemed like we had no hope of surviving, we came together. We helped pull the group together. And, we sang together. _We. Sang. Togethe_r.

And yeah, we lost; maybe I should have taken that as a sign or something. But it still _felt_ like winning, even _before_ Mr. Schue told us we had another year of glee, because, even with all the drama of Quinn giving birth and of Vocal-fricking-Adrenaline (_I don't let myself think of _his_ name if I can help it, the jerk; I wonder if it's too late to thank Quinn for timing her labor so that we got to skip out on their performance_) beating us, we had come together; we had sung together; we ended up together. And that had felt like winning, like everything was coming out all right.

It hasn't felt all right like that for a long time, now. I haven't felt alright. I'm starting to forget what it's like to feel as if everything is right, or will be right. And that scares me, because I do know that back then, I felt better, about myself and about my life, than I ever had before. I remember feeling that more was possible—that I could do and be more than I ever had imagined. I'd liked having that sense of possibility. It was as though, for the first time, I'd been able to see a light ahead, blazing a path into a future that might not be fully visible yet, but which shone with promise.

But now that light seems to have dissipated. I can see what's immediately ahead—what the rest of high school will look like, and that college will probably follow, but beyond that everything is murky, a formless void. And even now, when I can see what's happening, there are times when it feels like I'm just going through the motions, just doing what's expected, and I'm not always sure why.

Last year, we sang the duet together. We sang all the songs together; they were all duets, sung with and to each other—some just had additional voices joining in. But tonight the duet is being sung by Kurt and by Blaine. There are no duets this year for us—there's just a solo tonight.

_**Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight.  
But I think I'll be alright**_**  
**

_RACHEL:_

It's a solo I'll be singing tonight. Last year it was a duet. A duet that was the one shining spot in a night filled with the pain of watching Jesse perform and beat us, beat me; of having my mother reject me and replace me with Quinn's baby; of losing all of this, and the competition, and the future of New Directions, too. Loss upon loss upon loss. But somehow, amidst all the loss, what I remember most from the night was victory; because I heard three small syllables, three words spoken, followed by a flood of feeling and passion poured out in a song sung by two voices.

There will not be two voices tonight; there will be only one. Now I have to fly solo. I'm on my own, again. The happy ending might not come; fantasies might be just that—unreal, not true, never attainable. There may be no more duets for me; there may be only more loss; it might be only solos ahead, tonight and afterward.

If that's so, I'll have to find a way to deal with it; to be alright. I think that I can manage to do so. I've been alone before; I can survive being alone again.

But it is going to be harder, now, to go back to only being a soloist. It's ironic—I've always fought so hard for solos, loved so much being _the_ one in the spotlight. And yes, I still do love that. But now I also know from firsthand experience that while a single voice can thrill and soar and transport an audience to a wonderful place, two voices singing in harmony or in counterpoint, interweaving with each other, have the power to create a sound more resonant and complete than one alone. Two singing together can give birth to a sound that becomes more than just the blend of two voices, a song that tells of complementary opposites creating something new and beautiful and strange and transforming.

Tonight, it's Kurt's turn to sing the duet, and heaven knows he deserves it. There is no duet for me to sing; I had that last year, and now it's gone. For me, this year, it's a solo tonight.

_**One day you will wake up with nothing but your "sorrys," and someday you will get back everything you gave me.**_

_**Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight. I'm beginning to see the light.**_

_FINN:_

She said _"I'm sorry"_ so many times that I felt like I was drowning in the words; they had lost all sense and meaning. How could they make a difference after she told me that she wanted to hurt me; after she deliberately did something that would hurt me as much as was possible? How could _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_ make that any better?

But now, as I look down the row and see her, so far away and with a face suffused in sorrow, I realize that my intense anger has gone away. The pain and hurt, while still remembered, are fading. Puck is sitting next to her, and while the sight of them within five feet of each other used to send me spiraling into an internal fury, now it just seems to conjure up her words once again: _"I was so hurt, and I wanted to make you feel as bad as I felt."_

And it occurs to me, for the first time, that she didn't really say she wanted to_ hurt_ me; she didn't do what she did _just_ to cause me pain. _"I wanted to make _you feel_ as bad as _I felt_,"_ she said. She wanted me to hurt, yes—but in order to make me feel how much _she_ was hurting, how much pain _she_ was in. And I wonder why I never let myself appreciate the full depth of her pain.

She had hurt me, and had done so deliberately. But I had hurt her, too. That's why I (_deliberately_) had sex with Santana in the first place: _"What's in it for me?"_ I had asked that afternoon; _"You get to have sex, and make Rachel jealous,"_ had been the reply. I only went through with it after verifying that she was, indeed, with the jerk; I only did it to make her jealous, to gain a means of striking back (even if I didn't choose use it in the end). But keeping it from her that day in the choir room, it turns out, _wasn't_ the end. In the end, it came out; she learned of it; and, true to my initial intent, it made her jealous indeed; it hurt her just as much as I thought it would every time I lied about it, or maybe even more.

I'd been so _sure_ that the fault was all on her side, that I was justified walking away. I'd been so sure that not telling her was the right thing to do, because I was trying to keep her safe, to keep her from hurting. I'd been so certain that all of the _"I'm sorrys"_ should be given by her, given to me. But what if I was wrong? Maybe there was more than enough fault to go around; perhaps we've both felt equal amounts of pain.

And now I see her eyes fixed on Quinn's hand intertwined with mine—eyes directed down, still with the same look of sorrow, and I'm taken aback, because there's no anger, shock, or surprise on her face. And I realize that she _already_ knows—she already _knows_ about me and Quinn. Somehow, she found out. She knows I've been hiding something from her again; she knows I've been keeping her in the dark. Like before, I just tried to keep it from her to protect her, to keep her safe, so knowing wouldn't hurt her. Even though we're not together, I never want to hurt her; I care too much for her for that. But she knows, and it's like I thought it would be—she is hurting, hurting bad, and I can't deny being a part of causing it even though we're apart.

She has given me—piled on me, heaped on me—sorry after sorry, and has begged me for forgiveness. Maybe it's time to give that to her, to forgive her. Time to figure out a way to explain to her why I've done what I've done. And maybe it's time to ask her for what I'm finally willing not just to give, but need to accept: forgiveness in return.

_**Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight.  
**_

_**But I think I'll be alright.  
**_

_RACHEL:_

There is no guarantee of anything but more loss tonight; it could end, again, like it did last year. Kurt, Blaine, and the Warblers are fierce competition. Sue Sylvester's schemes have carried the day time after time. The message sent by Quinn clasping his hand is intentional and unmistakable; he is claimed, I've lost him, everyone will know. I'm being told, again, in a gesture, what she tried to force on me in words—it is over.

But I still have a song to sing, a solo to perform. A song that is all my own, born from my own experiences and emotions and soul. There's no duet tonight. I will sing my solo to a room filled with strangers, and filled as well with people I've hurt and been hurt by before. People from whom I've done everything to hide this part of myself. People from whom it will be safely hidden no longer. I will channel all the deep pain contained in this space—echoes of last year's pain and waves of a pain as fresh as this moment—into my original song, for the world to hear and know.

The candles have gone out. It is time to offer up a wish and a prayer that my song will be heard; that it will be alright. All I can do is to give it my all; to sing it with every ounce of passion that is in me; to risk putting everything out there; to lay it all on the line. All I can do is to let my song sing itself with utter conviction. To let it speak through me and for me. To see if it will be ajudged good enough to lift me, us, the team, to victory. To strive, this time, to finally get it right. I have my song to sing. And I know—I _do_ know—that somehow, no matter what happens, triumph or loss, I, too, _will_ be alright.

G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E G L E E


End file.
